Tuesday, February 11, 2014

What I think I can do vs. what I really can do.........

My husband has been in San Diego for the past five days. Every time he leaves, I set out to do something amazing. Like remodel the whole house. Or paint. Or.....ok, just put clean sheets on the bed before he gets back. Whatever my pie-in-the-sky plans are, I always come up short. I did accomplish a pretty big one this time - converting my oldest daughter's former room back into my office. Years ago, when I purchased my house, I had a special "just for me" office added to the floor plan. I loved it. It was a disaster. I called it my second garage. But it was MY space. And it was glorious.

This weekend's transformation took a bit of effort and some help from my strapping 15-year-old son who begrudgingly helped me move the bigger pieces of furniture. Then there was a fair amount of cleaning and purging, and the realization (not a happy one) that my daughter's "stuff" still inhabited 90% of the very generous closet space. But it's functional now, and although it still needs some pretty-ing up - pictures on the walls, perhaps some inspirational quotes? - my desk faces the park and open space behind my house and it's lovely.

My husband will be thrilled that the various plastic drawer-like devices containing stamp pads, stamps, various scrapbooking items, fabric and other miscellaneous stuff are no longer inhabiting the corners of our room. He will be delighted that the many photo storage boxes stacked on top of our dresser are now re-homed in the 10% of closet space my daughter generously left me. To him, these items are my "crap" - the completely unnecessary and ridiculous piles of things I need in order to create things. Kind of like his multitude of tool boxes and rusty tools he calls vital to his lifestyle. In all fairness, though, he doesn't keep his tools in the bedroom, so I guess I don't have to, either. (LOL on everyone who just though of a "tool in the bedroom" joke).

I wanted to clean my bathroom from top to bottom, but that didn't happen. I did make my daughter mop my bathroom floor but noticed that she stopped just short of the tiny closet-like room that houses the toilet. That was very helpful. Kind of like when I asked my other daughter to mop the kitchen floor the other day because the dog's injured foot was bleeding all over it and when I came home to the "yeah, I did it" I noticed a few spots of dried blood still on the floor. Gross AND lazy.

I wanted to have pictures hung in my new office. But first I had to inventory all the frames I had, then match those up to pictures I need to frame, and of course most of them don't match up, so that means I have to print pictures to be framed and when do I have time to weed through my millions of pictures to find just the right ones for the frames? Never, that's when.

I wanted to complete the scrapbook I've been promising my husband for the past two years. When I found all his childhood pictures were glued to the pages of the old-time NON-acid-free pages of those "magnetic" photo albums, I immediately disassembled them and promised him a new, better, shiny scrapbook with all of his childhood memories. This Christmas I actually purchased the book, page protectors, etc. A few months before that I (sort of) organized the photos. This weekend, I moved the whole lot of it into my new office, closer to where I'll actually have space to work on it. Progress, right? 

Yeah, I always have big plans. And I never accomplish them. But it's ok. I usually reach that point where I figure I'll never get it all done on time so why bother? Plus, my husband is a guy, and guys by nature barely notice things like the above-mentioned wish list. He won't care about the semi-mopped bathroom floor. But something about him going out of town makes me want to accomplish things. And boy, do I have lofty goals sometimes! Thankfully, my procrastination (blogging, Facebook) bring me right back down to earth where I can settle into mediocrity.

Nothing but the best.